Bioluminescent Aquarium
A dark tank, three glowing jellyfish and a thin stream of bubbles. Stir the water to make it glow, and touch a jellyfish to wake its light.
Soft blue light
The jellyfish pulse slowly, the water glows softly where you stir it, and a touched jellyfish lights up from its bell down over two seconds. Nothing flashes. Sound plays only if you start with it.
What you can do here
- Stir the water
- Move through the tank, or drag a finger across it, and the water sparks blue where you went; a faster hand lights more of it. Turn Glow down to stir it without the light.
- Wake a jellyfish
- Tap a jellyfish and a slow wave of light runs from its bell to the tips of its tentacles. Each one rests a few seconds before it answers again.
- Watch them row
- Each bell closes and opens slowly, rising a little on every stroke, while a ripple runs down its tentacles. Current sets the pace, how far they drift and how quickly the bubbles stream.
- Open the outlet
- Tap the outlet at the bottom right, or press Release bubbles, for a burst that lights the water on its way up.
Use it as your wallpaper
Press F for fullscreen and M to turn the sound off and on; the volume and your sound choice carry over to every wallpaper. The sound keeps playing if you switch to another tab.
Live link
https://whitescreen.tv/interactive-wallpapers/bioluminescent-aquarium/#wallpaper- On a computer desktop
- Some wallpaper apps can show a web page behind your desktop icons. Give one the live link above and the scene runs there on its own: no page around it, no ads and no sound.
- On a TV or a spare screen
- Open this page and press F, or use Fullscreen. While it’s in fullscreen we ask the browser to keep the screen from going to sleep.
- On a phone or tablet
- Save image downloads exactly what’s on the screen as a picture. Set it as your wallpaper from your photos; the phone will crop the sides.
A live wallpaper keeps a page running all day. Through the live link the scene draws at most 30 frames a second and stops while the screen is covered, but on a laptop it still costs some battery.
Water that answers touch
Some plankton, tiny single cells called dinoflagellates, give off a flash of blue light when the water around them is disturbed. It is the glow you see in breaking waves on certain beaches at night, or trailing behind a boat in a bioluminescent bay. Here the water does the same wherever you move through it, and the rising bubbles set off a spark now and then too.
Light from the animals themselves
Many animals of the deep sea make their own light. When something grabs the deep-sea Atolla jellyfish, it sets off a spinning ring of blue light, a burglar alarm that may draw a bigger predator to its attacker. The jellyfish in this tank borrow that idea: touch one and a slow wave of light runs down its body.
About the sounds
Two recordings: the soft hum of the tank’s circulation, and a fine stream of bubbles when you open the outlet. The bubbles wait six seconds between plays, so they never pile up.
If you’d rather just watch
Picture and sounds generated from our prompts. Motion, controls and mix by WhiteScreen.tv.
